Feb 7 Super Bowl

Superbowl Sunday in the coronaverse. It was almost normal to watch the yearly sporting spectacle that takes over the TV screens in North America every February. Almost normal.

I tried to care, I tried to find a reason to pull for a team of millionaires chasing a pigskin around a one-third full stadium in Tampa Bay Florida. I tried to care; I couldn’t.

It wasn’t the same without the parties. At least the NFL got to play its championship game. In Canada, our woebegone CFL couldn’t even play a single game in the world that has been turned upside down by random invasive strands of RNA. This was the largest event in the last ten months since the pandemic began. I watched it after a day of powder turns at Big White. I would rather ski powder than watch a game played by rich athletes.

I knew the game would be played between a young phenom quarterback and the ancient QB Tom Brady. Arguments have abounded about whether Tom Brady would be considered The Greatest Of All Time. On this Sunday afternoon in Tampa, he erased any doubt about who could be considered the greatest QB ever. It is a sentiment that feels like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I don’t know why I have never liked Tom Brady, maybe it’s his all American persona that grates on me. I have always found myself pulling for the other team to beat Brady. This time it was over by halftime and I found myself respecting the man and his accomplishments more than ever before.

It’s appropriate that in the coronaverse of 2020-2021 the championship game of the NFL was played in the home town and they came out victorious. I am sure that covid protocols were not followed too strictly on Sunday after the game. With 25,000 fans and 50,000 cardboard people watching the game, it felt very surreal watching it on TV. It was very cool that of those fans and cutouts 7500 were front-line health-care workers.

In any other year, there would have been thousands of fans on the field and a parade in the streets. Now in a muted celebration, the home team can celebrate a victory at home for the first time ever.

Congratulations to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on their impressive victory. I hope next year we can all gather again and have a Super Bowl party for the ages.